Disclaimer: I don't own any of the G-boys etc, regardless of how much I'd
like to ___
Warnings: Yaoi, violence, language, angst, lime, a bit fluffy too, I guess
Pairings: 1x2
1 Carpe Diem
Quatre gave a wan smile as Trowa shouldered himself into his pyjama shirt. The European did so gingerly, trying not to let the fabric cause friction on his injured shoulder.
"I told you that you're too brave for your own good," Quatre admonished good-naturedly. Trowa said nothing, which was not unusual, but Quatre could see the sparkle of amusement in his green eyes.
Quatre dropped himself onto their bed and put his hands behind his head. He gazed at the ceiling for a while. He just lay there, letting himself rest for a few moments before getting up the energy to climb under his covers. He felt Trowa climb into the bed next to him.
Without looking at his partner, Quatre asked, "How's Heero?"
"Same as ever," said Trowa quietly. "He just went straight to his room when we got back."
Quatre sighed. He shifted onto his side and propped his head up on his hand and gazed at his lover on the pillows. "Was he injured? That mission today was difficult."
"I can never tell," Trowa replied glancing at the concerned blonde boy. "He never speaks to me."
Quatre nodded sadly. "Yeah, I know. Me neither." Quatre sighed again. Heero had been like this for too long now. It hurt Quatre to see his friend still obviously suffering from Duo's death, but it seemed no one could do anything to ease the sorrow. Heero was very independent and he disliked sympathy. The only way Heero was going to heal was if he healed himself. Quatre and the others, even Wufei, had been trying for months to get him back to his old self (which was not much of an improvement) but to no avail.
Quatre yawned and stretched. He flinched slightly. His back ached terribly. It had been a difficult mission.
"Quatre? Daijoobu desu ka?" Trowa asked with concern.
"Hai," Quatre nodded, touched, as he always was by his friend's concern. "I'm ok." He hauled himself off the bed. "I'm just going to get some cocoa - "
"I'll get it," Trowa said and pulled back the covers.
"No, it's alright, really," Quatre smiled. "You rest your shoulder. I think I want to give my back a bit of a stretch before I settle down anyway. Would you like a mug off cocoa too?"
Trowa shook his head. "No thank you."
Quatre smiled sleepily and headed out the door whilst tying up his dressing gown. He made his way down the stairs in the dark and into the kitchen. He shivered slightly as he switched on the light. This was a very draughty house, but it was the only safe one in the area for miles. Quatre rummaged around in the pantry amongst all their groceries, which were scarce and packed in cardboard boxes. He soon found the packet of instant cocoa. He selected a mug that wasn't too stained and set the kettle to boil.
He leant against the counter to wait. He rubbed the backs of his arms. It was freezing. He yawned again.
Suddenly, he heard the creak of the front door opening. He frowned in confusion. Wufei wasn't out late tonight and he and Heero were both in their room. He heard footsteps heading to the kitchen. He swiftly retrieved the gun that they kept hidden in one of the drawers and clicked off the safety.
The kitchen door opened.
"Hey, Q-man!" the boy in the door greeted jauntily. "How's it goin'?"
Quatre choked for a moment. His vision blurred and his head swam. The gun clattered to the floor and Quatre fainted.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Heero looked up from his computer, frowning. His ultra sensitive hearing had picked up a crash. Wufei was messing around in the shower, but the noise had come from downstairs. Ever suspicious, Heero grabbed his handgun and made his way down the stairs. The light was on in the kitchen.
He gently nudged the door open with his toe. Quatre lay unconscious on the floor by the counter. Someone was bending over him, someone whose beautiful face was creased in worry and confusion, someone whose clothes were too big, someone with a long braid of messy but clean hair.
It was a dream, Heero decided. It had to be a dream. He had had so many. Carpe diem. It's only a dream, it can't hurt. It'll hurt you when you wake up if you do it; it'll hurt you worse if you don't.
Heero dropped his gun and moved forward. The boy looked up from the recumbent Quatre. Those impossibly brilliant eyes brightened. The lips moved with words but Heero couldn't understand them. They didn't matter.
The boy stood and Heero moved closer. It was just a dream, it wasn't real, he kept telling himself. But he didn't care. He wrapped the boy in an embrace and captured his surprised mouth in a passionate but gentle kiss. Duo.
For a moment, the Dream Duo froze in his grip and gave a startled yip. Soon enough, however, Duo melted into the kiss and deepened it. Heero never wanted to wake up.
The taste, the feel.it was real. Realisation was like ice stabbing him through the heart to leave an aftermath of burning fury. Heero pulled away so fast that Duo stumbled and almost fell over Quatre.
"Omae o koroso," Heero growled. His dark eyes screamed bloody murder. The next thing the startled braided boy knew, he was thrown roughly on the floor and Heero was sitting on his stomach. Heero grabbed him by the shirtfront. Heero shook him so vigorously that his head snapped back and forth painfully.
"What kind of sick joke is this?" Heero snarled, shaking the boy by his collar violently. "What the hell do they think they're bloody well playing at!"
All the boy in his grasp could do was try weakly to ease the grip that Heero had on his shirt so he could breathe.
"What the hell is this?" Heero held the boy so close that he could see the terror and bewilderment in his eyes. "What the fuck are you trying to accomplish!" Heero was virtually screaming by now. It hurt, it hurt so much. Duo was dead, Duo was dead! It had never stopped hurting. To have this thrown at him, it was just too much. He had suffered so much.
Trowa and Wufei skidded into the kitchen. The scene before them was enough to confuse anyone. Trowa rushed to Quatre just as his eyes started to blink open. Heero was still screaming at the boy he'd battered to the ground.
Wufei's eyes widened in horror. Heero Yuy was unbalancing. He rushed forward and grabbed him by the back of his tank top. It took a lot of effort to pry him off the intruder. Trowa had to help pull the boy to safety. Wufei held the perfect soldier in an iron grip as his eyes blazed. Heero's arms were steel knots of tensed muscle. He stopped screaming, but he breathed hard in and out of clenched teeth.
Quatre clambered to his feet and leant on the counter. Wufei continued to hold Heero back but peered over his shoulder. Trowa held in his arms the shuddering boy that Heero was now trying to destroy even if it was by glaring alone.
All the pilots were silent as the boy raised his face out of Trowa's shirt, streaked with tears and terror in his eyes. It was Duo.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"It's me guys, why won't you believe me?" Duo pleaded. It had all in all been a very tiring day for Duo. He had finally reached the safe house where the pilots were stationed and in the first five minutes of arriving, he had been fainted at, kissed and beaten up. Right now he was on a chair with his wrists secured to the chair back behind him and his ankles bound together. And all four of the pilots were looking at him with different degrees of confusion, anger and hatred. He just couldn't figure it out.
"What is this?" asked Wufei, looking at Duo but talking to the others. Heero had his back to the scene and was kneading his fists together with his eyes clenched shut. Quatre was sitting down with a glass of water and Trowa was standing near Heero in case he made a violent lunge for Duo.
"I don't know," said Trowa. "I really can't understand what's going on."
"I bet they're all having a right laugh about this," Heero hissed. He refused to look at the boy in the chair. That hurt Duo most of all. For some reason Heero was completely disgusted by him. That stabbed deep. But Duo swallowed the pain and tried to find out what was wrong.
"I honestly don't see what's wrong with you guys," he said. All, except Heero, looked at him. "Why the hell don't you think it's me? I mean, who else could it be? I'm not Mother Teresa, I know that, and I'm certainly not, as far as I know, Boris Yeltsin. It's me! Duo Maxwell! Remember? The loud guy with the killer haircut?"
The other pilot's just stared at him. He sighed in exasperation. "Why do you think I'm not me?"
"You really don't have a clue?" Quatre asked, only slightly less acidic than everyone else.
Duo shook his head.
Quatre looked at the others. "This doesn't make sense. He can't have been sent to infiltrate us. He really thinks he's Duo - "
"I am Duo!!" Duo virtually shrieked.
Quatre threw him a glance to ask him to clam up. Duo snarled in frustration and slumped back in his chair.
Heero finally turned. He walked forward. Everyone tensed. Heero took Duo's chin in his fingers and moved his face this way and that as if he were examining an interesting explosive. Duo froze. "He's identical. Why else would they send him except to infiltrate?"
"They haven't sent me, no one's sent me!" Duo cried.
"Ok, what's your side of the story?" Wufei asked. Heero dropped his chin.
"I told you," Duo said. "I woke up in the OZ hospital. The last thing I remember - " he took a deep breath and didn't look at Heero " - was passing out in Deathscythe's cockpit. I'd fallen on a huge shard of metal."
Trowa noticed Heero's fists curl. This was hard on him, Trowa knew. It was harder on Heero than it was on the rest of them. They all knew how much Heero had cared for Duo, even if it had taken Heero himself some time to realise it. Trowa stepped forward.
"Duo's been gone for seven months," Trowa said.
"Nani?!" the boy in the chair exclaimed. "Seven bloody months! Jesus! I had no idea I was in there that long," he looked away. "I guess you guys must have stopped looking if I'd been gone that long." The pilots exchanged glances.
Duo looked up. "You still don't believe it's me?"
They were all silent.
Duo thought hard. "Hang on, I know that Wufei wears pink boxers decorated with teddy bears!"
They all looked at Wufei who blushed furiously.
"How would I know that if I weren't me?" Duo asked. Though slightly amused now, the pilot's did not look convinced. Man, Duo thought. //What has happened to these guys that has made them so certain that I'd never come back?//
"Ok, ok," Duo said and thought hard. An idea struck him. "My shoulder!"
The pilots looked at him with raised eyebrows.
"I have a scar on my right shoulder," Duo said triumphantly. He turned to Heero and immediately regretted it. Those eyes were like cruel glass splinters. But Duo ploughed on. "You remember Heero? We were on that infiltration mission. You were there too, Quatre. We were arguing and they snuck up on us. I caught the ricochet. Surely you remember!"
"That's right," said Quatre. It pained Quatre to see this guy so like Duo. He behaved exactly the same. He spoke the same. He looked the same. What was going on?
"Well, check my shoulder!" Duo insisted. "If I were a double, which, for some reason, you seem to think I am, then I wouldn't have exactly the same scar."
Trowa moved forward. Some small flickering of hope wished the scar would be there, wished it was Duo, somehow, risen from the grave, sitting there in that chair. But he knew it wasn't. He unbuttoned the top few buttons on the boy's large shirt and pulled back the collar to expose his shoulder.
"You see," Duo said. "I told you - "
"Duo." Trowa interrupted him. "There's nothing there."
"Nani?" Duo craned his neck to get a look at his shoulder. There was no scar there, not so much as a blemish on the skin. Duo blinked for a few seconds. "Crikey," he said quietly. "Where the hell's that gone then?"
Quatre sighed and rubbed his temples. This was too much. "Look," he said quietly. "You said the last thing you remember was being flung on that metal, right?"
Duo tore his gaze away from his shoulder to nod.
"Well then," Quatre said. "If it were you, you'd have a huge scar from that too, wouldn't you?"
Duo started to protest.
"But you haven't got a scar, have you?" Quatre said. "You haven't even got so much as the pain from that injury which would have killed you."
Duo fell into quiet. He knew he didn't have a scar from the injury. He never thought to check, but he knew he would have known there was one if there was. Duo hung his head. "I don't.understand," he said. He lifted his face again. There were tears in his eyes. "It's me you guys. I swear it. I swear it on my own blood. I swear it on the blood of Father Maxwell," he looked at all of them. They were all quiet. Duo pulled his gaze to Heero. "Heero," he whispered. All his hurt and his loneliness caused his voice to shake. "Heero, it's me. You told me that you." the tears choked his voice. "Please."
Heero wanted to believe. He so wanted to believe. He wanted to fall into the trap. He hated seeing those eyes that he'd missed so sorely filled with tears. He hated to see Duo feeling so betrayed.but it wasn't Duo. Duo was lying in the earth in a graveyard in the Sanc Kingdom. Heero had seen his lifeless body, cleaned and dressed lovingly, lying on the white satin of a coffin, eyes closed as if in a peaceful sleep. He had seen the coffin lid fixed forever over Duo's body. He had seen it lowered into the ground and then seen it buried.
Though he saw a boy sitting before him, hurt and confused, he knew it wasn't Duo.
Heero closed his eyes to shut out the penetrating violet stare and once more turned his back on him. It was a cruel twist of a knife embedded in his life, heart and soul. A cruel twist brought on by OZ. People were going to die for this.
"And you genuinely have no idea why we're not falling for this?" Heero heard Wufei's voice as if it were from a great distance.
Duo blinked away the tears and looked at Wufei. His eyes were hard and merciless as ever, but Duo sensed something in all the pilots had at last been shaken. "It's not a trick you guys. I never tell a lie. Especially not to you."
Something in Trowa clicked. He abruptly left the room. There was a short interval whilst everyone else just stared at each other.
"Come here a second," Trowa's voice came from the next room.
Wufei and Quatre glanced at the boy in the chair.
"He's not going anywhere," Heero said. But for some strange reason, the cruel words were soft and had a different meaning. Heero knew somehow that the boy had no reason to want to leave.
Heero, Quatre and Wufei all proceeded into the next room.
Trowa was sitting at the small battered desk with a laptop open on the surface. The illumination from the screen danced across his stoic face as the keys clicked noisily.
"What the hell is this?" Wufei asked. "What is going on? He can't be a double, he's just too." Wufei searched for the right words, ".Duo. No one else could act like that."
"It's not Duo," Heero said firmly. "Duo is dead."
"More importantly, what's he doing here?" asked Quatre. "I mean, not even OZ is stupid enough to try and infiltrate us with a double of someone who is dead."
Heero involuntarily flinched. "You're right," he said quietly. "They're trying to break our moral."
Quatre and Wufei exchanged glances silently. Quatre took a breath. "I don't think OZ would go to all this trouble so as just to play a cruel joke on us."
"Joke!" Heero snapped. "You call this a joke!" Heero continued to shout, despite the warning glances he got from Trowa. "My best friend died seven months ago and I've continued to go through hell and back to try and deal with it, and know he's sitting in my lounge, big as life. That's your idea of a joke, is it, Quatre Raberba Winner?"
Trowa stood. "That's enough Heero," he warned. "Getting at each other's throats won't solve anything."
Heero did not fail to notice the double entendre in Trowa's words. Heero had almost unhinged in the kitchen, almost throttled the guy to death. He clutched his head and tried to regain some control. "I'm sorry," was all he said, quietly.
Quatre nodded and smiled reassuringly, even though Heero had his eyes closed. "It's ok, Heero. I know this is hard."
Heero blinked his eyes open. They were all watching him with mixtures of understanding and sympathy in their eyes. It was hard on them too, Heero belatedly realised. Duo had been their friend as well.
"What I think is so strange," said Wufei to get back to the subject. "Is that he is really convinced that he is Duo." He looked at his companions who urged him to continue. "I mean, he wouldn't point out the faults in his disguise, like the scar on his shoulder, if he were trying to infiltrate. Whoever is behind this obviously knew that Duo had had a scar on his shoulder, otherwise the double wouldn't have known. If they wanted to pass him off actually as Duo, they would have faked a scar or just have him clam up about it so no one would realise it wasn't there. But he pointed out its absence, albeit unwittingly, because he was sure that scar would be there."
Trowa nodded and clicked one final key on the laptop. "I think I've figured it out," he said as calmly as if he were announcing that it had started raining. The pilots clustered around the laptop.
Heero examined the screen. OZ research files. "Clones?" he asked Trowa. "You think that."
Trowa looked at all of them. "It's the only thing that makes sense. There have been rumors of cloning technology floating around all over the place for years. What if OZ has finally perfected it?"
Quatre shivered again, not just because of the cold. "So, you think that guy tied to the chair in there.is Duo's clone?"
Trowa slowly nodded.
Wufei shook his head. "Why in the Earth Sphere would OZ want a clone of Duo? A clone of one of us might make sense so they could use it for infiltration, but we know that this guy isn't for infiltration."
"You're right," said Trowa, shutting the laptop. "He's not. I think he was probably made as a weapon, so that they might have a fighting chance of being able to beat us in a battle. They want a pilot as good as us on their side."
Heero tried to think this through. "Then what's he doing here? Is he on OZ's side?"
Trowa shook his head. "I don't think so. As far as I can tell, I think he is the first one they've used for this. They wanted a pilot as good as Duo Maxwell. To make one, all they needed was some of Duo's DNA."
"The blood in Deathscythe's cockpit," Heero whispered.
Trowa nodded and continued. "I've heard that your memories are written into your DNA as well, that's how we keep them. OZ will have not wanted the body of Duo, because a body is just a body. It will have been strong and healthy like Duo's was, but it wouldn't be an ace pilot. So, I think they must have included in the clone all of his memories, all of his characteristics and talents that were mapped in his DNA so he would be as good a pilot as the original."
"Makes sense," Wufei said.
"But, something has gone wrong," Heero said. "They expected to have a new person wake up in the bed who they could control and recruit to their cause. They thought that by giving him all those things, all that would happen would be that he would have the talents and the resources they needed to use."
"Exactly," said Trowa. "And that did happen. But, along with it, they have just put everything where it belongs. They have given him all the same experiences, all the same drives, the same personality," Trowa looked significantly at Heero. "The same feelings. He is exactly the same person as the one who died."
Quatre nodded. "They thought he's wake up green and confused like a baby, but an incredibly useful baby that would know how to fly a Gundam terrifically. But he didn't wake up a baby. He woke up as Duo Maxwell."
"No," Heero said. "He's not Duo! You've just explained that."
"No," said Trowa. "He's not the original Duo. But he is an exact copy. That's why, when he found out he was in an OZ facility, he escaped and tracked us down."
There was a long silence. Quatre finally voiced the question that they all wanted to ask. "Do you think he knows?"
"No," said Trowa quietly. "I don't think he does. That's why he was certain of the scar. That's why he can't understand why we don't believe him."
"He doesn't know he's dead," Heero said quietly. "He thinks he is Duo."
"Well," said Quatre. "I guess, in a certain sense, he is."
"No!" said Heero quickly. "He is not Duo."
To avoid another discussion that was only going to achieve getting everyone angry, Wufei chipped in. "Listen. As far as that guy sitting tied to a chair out there is concerned, he is Duo, right? He remembers the battle, he remembers being injured badly. He thinks he's been captured by OZ for seven months but has managed to escape. And he came back to us and we've treated him like this. Now, what we really need to decide now is," Wufei took a breath and met eyes with everyone in the room one at a time, "do we tell him?"
Quatre chewed his lip and looked at Trowa. Trowa frowned slightly and looked at Heero. This was hardest on him most of all. What kind of decision was this for him to make, for any of them to make? Tell a guy who thinks he is your friend that he's not. Tell him all his memories, all his experiences, all his feelings belong to someone else? Someone else who is dead?
"This is not fair," Heero said quietly. That summed up everything Heero had ever experienced.
Quatre, always gentle and caring, spoke. "It would shatter him if we told him."
"But if he finds out by himself, it could be worse," Wufei pointed out. "Especially if he finds out we knew all along."
"We can't let him carry on thinking he's someone he's not," Heero said quietly. "He was created by OZ. We should kill him."
All the pilots knew that was what they should do. It was the most prudent course of action. It would stop OZ getting their hands on him, it would stop him living on stolen memories and it would mean that they wouldn't have to live with the pain of existing with their deceased best friend's clone.
But not one of them could bare the thought of doing it.
"We should keep him with us for a while," said Quatre. "We need to destroy that OZ facility that created him in order to make sure this does not happen again. We will need him to tell us where it is."
They all nodded at the logic of that.
They all looked at one another and an unspoken decision passed between them.
"We'll have to tell him some time though," said Wufei.
"And we will," said Trowa. "Just not yet."
"This is going to be hard," Quatre said. They all agreed. Living with someone that thought, acted and spoke exactly like someone who they knew to be dead was going to be tough.
However, all of them were shamefully wishing that it might bring back a little of what they had lost.
"We must all agree," said Heero. "Never to forget that our Duo is dead. We must not try and replace him, however much we may like to."
"We must do justice to his memory," Wufei said.
They all nodded. This was going to be very, very hard.
Author's note: more to come very soon. Should have another chapter up soon. For all the new readers, how do you like it so far?
Warnings: Yaoi, violence, language, angst, lime, a bit fluffy too, I guess
Pairings: 1x2
1 Carpe Diem
Quatre gave a wan smile as Trowa shouldered himself into his pyjama shirt. The European did so gingerly, trying not to let the fabric cause friction on his injured shoulder.
"I told you that you're too brave for your own good," Quatre admonished good-naturedly. Trowa said nothing, which was not unusual, but Quatre could see the sparkle of amusement in his green eyes.
Quatre dropped himself onto their bed and put his hands behind his head. He gazed at the ceiling for a while. He just lay there, letting himself rest for a few moments before getting up the energy to climb under his covers. He felt Trowa climb into the bed next to him.
Without looking at his partner, Quatre asked, "How's Heero?"
"Same as ever," said Trowa quietly. "He just went straight to his room when we got back."
Quatre sighed. He shifted onto his side and propped his head up on his hand and gazed at his lover on the pillows. "Was he injured? That mission today was difficult."
"I can never tell," Trowa replied glancing at the concerned blonde boy. "He never speaks to me."
Quatre nodded sadly. "Yeah, I know. Me neither." Quatre sighed again. Heero had been like this for too long now. It hurt Quatre to see his friend still obviously suffering from Duo's death, but it seemed no one could do anything to ease the sorrow. Heero was very independent and he disliked sympathy. The only way Heero was going to heal was if he healed himself. Quatre and the others, even Wufei, had been trying for months to get him back to his old self (which was not much of an improvement) but to no avail.
Quatre yawned and stretched. He flinched slightly. His back ached terribly. It had been a difficult mission.
"Quatre? Daijoobu desu ka?" Trowa asked with concern.
"Hai," Quatre nodded, touched, as he always was by his friend's concern. "I'm ok." He hauled himself off the bed. "I'm just going to get some cocoa - "
"I'll get it," Trowa said and pulled back the covers.
"No, it's alright, really," Quatre smiled. "You rest your shoulder. I think I want to give my back a bit of a stretch before I settle down anyway. Would you like a mug off cocoa too?"
Trowa shook his head. "No thank you."
Quatre smiled sleepily and headed out the door whilst tying up his dressing gown. He made his way down the stairs in the dark and into the kitchen. He shivered slightly as he switched on the light. This was a very draughty house, but it was the only safe one in the area for miles. Quatre rummaged around in the pantry amongst all their groceries, which were scarce and packed in cardboard boxes. He soon found the packet of instant cocoa. He selected a mug that wasn't too stained and set the kettle to boil.
He leant against the counter to wait. He rubbed the backs of his arms. It was freezing. He yawned again.
Suddenly, he heard the creak of the front door opening. He frowned in confusion. Wufei wasn't out late tonight and he and Heero were both in their room. He heard footsteps heading to the kitchen. He swiftly retrieved the gun that they kept hidden in one of the drawers and clicked off the safety.
The kitchen door opened.
"Hey, Q-man!" the boy in the door greeted jauntily. "How's it goin'?"
Quatre choked for a moment. His vision blurred and his head swam. The gun clattered to the floor and Quatre fainted.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Heero looked up from his computer, frowning. His ultra sensitive hearing had picked up a crash. Wufei was messing around in the shower, but the noise had come from downstairs. Ever suspicious, Heero grabbed his handgun and made his way down the stairs. The light was on in the kitchen.
He gently nudged the door open with his toe. Quatre lay unconscious on the floor by the counter. Someone was bending over him, someone whose beautiful face was creased in worry and confusion, someone whose clothes were too big, someone with a long braid of messy but clean hair.
It was a dream, Heero decided. It had to be a dream. He had had so many. Carpe diem. It's only a dream, it can't hurt. It'll hurt you when you wake up if you do it; it'll hurt you worse if you don't.
Heero dropped his gun and moved forward. The boy looked up from the recumbent Quatre. Those impossibly brilliant eyes brightened. The lips moved with words but Heero couldn't understand them. They didn't matter.
The boy stood and Heero moved closer. It was just a dream, it wasn't real, he kept telling himself. But he didn't care. He wrapped the boy in an embrace and captured his surprised mouth in a passionate but gentle kiss. Duo.
For a moment, the Dream Duo froze in his grip and gave a startled yip. Soon enough, however, Duo melted into the kiss and deepened it. Heero never wanted to wake up.
The taste, the feel.it was real. Realisation was like ice stabbing him through the heart to leave an aftermath of burning fury. Heero pulled away so fast that Duo stumbled and almost fell over Quatre.
"Omae o koroso," Heero growled. His dark eyes screamed bloody murder. The next thing the startled braided boy knew, he was thrown roughly on the floor and Heero was sitting on his stomach. Heero grabbed him by the shirtfront. Heero shook him so vigorously that his head snapped back and forth painfully.
"What kind of sick joke is this?" Heero snarled, shaking the boy by his collar violently. "What the hell do they think they're bloody well playing at!"
All the boy in his grasp could do was try weakly to ease the grip that Heero had on his shirt so he could breathe.
"What the hell is this?" Heero held the boy so close that he could see the terror and bewilderment in his eyes. "What the fuck are you trying to accomplish!" Heero was virtually screaming by now. It hurt, it hurt so much. Duo was dead, Duo was dead! It had never stopped hurting. To have this thrown at him, it was just too much. He had suffered so much.
Trowa and Wufei skidded into the kitchen. The scene before them was enough to confuse anyone. Trowa rushed to Quatre just as his eyes started to blink open. Heero was still screaming at the boy he'd battered to the ground.
Wufei's eyes widened in horror. Heero Yuy was unbalancing. He rushed forward and grabbed him by the back of his tank top. It took a lot of effort to pry him off the intruder. Trowa had to help pull the boy to safety. Wufei held the perfect soldier in an iron grip as his eyes blazed. Heero's arms were steel knots of tensed muscle. He stopped screaming, but he breathed hard in and out of clenched teeth.
Quatre clambered to his feet and leant on the counter. Wufei continued to hold Heero back but peered over his shoulder. Trowa held in his arms the shuddering boy that Heero was now trying to destroy even if it was by glaring alone.
All the pilots were silent as the boy raised his face out of Trowa's shirt, streaked with tears and terror in his eyes. It was Duo.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"It's me guys, why won't you believe me?" Duo pleaded. It had all in all been a very tiring day for Duo. He had finally reached the safe house where the pilots were stationed and in the first five minutes of arriving, he had been fainted at, kissed and beaten up. Right now he was on a chair with his wrists secured to the chair back behind him and his ankles bound together. And all four of the pilots were looking at him with different degrees of confusion, anger and hatred. He just couldn't figure it out.
"What is this?" asked Wufei, looking at Duo but talking to the others. Heero had his back to the scene and was kneading his fists together with his eyes clenched shut. Quatre was sitting down with a glass of water and Trowa was standing near Heero in case he made a violent lunge for Duo.
"I don't know," said Trowa. "I really can't understand what's going on."
"I bet they're all having a right laugh about this," Heero hissed. He refused to look at the boy in the chair. That hurt Duo most of all. For some reason Heero was completely disgusted by him. That stabbed deep. But Duo swallowed the pain and tried to find out what was wrong.
"I honestly don't see what's wrong with you guys," he said. All, except Heero, looked at him. "Why the hell don't you think it's me? I mean, who else could it be? I'm not Mother Teresa, I know that, and I'm certainly not, as far as I know, Boris Yeltsin. It's me! Duo Maxwell! Remember? The loud guy with the killer haircut?"
The other pilot's just stared at him. He sighed in exasperation. "Why do you think I'm not me?"
"You really don't have a clue?" Quatre asked, only slightly less acidic than everyone else.
Duo shook his head.
Quatre looked at the others. "This doesn't make sense. He can't have been sent to infiltrate us. He really thinks he's Duo - "
"I am Duo!!" Duo virtually shrieked.
Quatre threw him a glance to ask him to clam up. Duo snarled in frustration and slumped back in his chair.
Heero finally turned. He walked forward. Everyone tensed. Heero took Duo's chin in his fingers and moved his face this way and that as if he were examining an interesting explosive. Duo froze. "He's identical. Why else would they send him except to infiltrate?"
"They haven't sent me, no one's sent me!" Duo cried.
"Ok, what's your side of the story?" Wufei asked. Heero dropped his chin.
"I told you," Duo said. "I woke up in the OZ hospital. The last thing I remember - " he took a deep breath and didn't look at Heero " - was passing out in Deathscythe's cockpit. I'd fallen on a huge shard of metal."
Trowa noticed Heero's fists curl. This was hard on him, Trowa knew. It was harder on Heero than it was on the rest of them. They all knew how much Heero had cared for Duo, even if it had taken Heero himself some time to realise it. Trowa stepped forward.
"Duo's been gone for seven months," Trowa said.
"Nani?!" the boy in the chair exclaimed. "Seven bloody months! Jesus! I had no idea I was in there that long," he looked away. "I guess you guys must have stopped looking if I'd been gone that long." The pilots exchanged glances.
Duo looked up. "You still don't believe it's me?"
They were all silent.
Duo thought hard. "Hang on, I know that Wufei wears pink boxers decorated with teddy bears!"
They all looked at Wufei who blushed furiously.
"How would I know that if I weren't me?" Duo asked. Though slightly amused now, the pilot's did not look convinced. Man, Duo thought. //What has happened to these guys that has made them so certain that I'd never come back?//
"Ok, ok," Duo said and thought hard. An idea struck him. "My shoulder!"
The pilots looked at him with raised eyebrows.
"I have a scar on my right shoulder," Duo said triumphantly. He turned to Heero and immediately regretted it. Those eyes were like cruel glass splinters. But Duo ploughed on. "You remember Heero? We were on that infiltration mission. You were there too, Quatre. We were arguing and they snuck up on us. I caught the ricochet. Surely you remember!"
"That's right," said Quatre. It pained Quatre to see this guy so like Duo. He behaved exactly the same. He spoke the same. He looked the same. What was going on?
"Well, check my shoulder!" Duo insisted. "If I were a double, which, for some reason, you seem to think I am, then I wouldn't have exactly the same scar."
Trowa moved forward. Some small flickering of hope wished the scar would be there, wished it was Duo, somehow, risen from the grave, sitting there in that chair. But he knew it wasn't. He unbuttoned the top few buttons on the boy's large shirt and pulled back the collar to expose his shoulder.
"You see," Duo said. "I told you - "
"Duo." Trowa interrupted him. "There's nothing there."
"Nani?" Duo craned his neck to get a look at his shoulder. There was no scar there, not so much as a blemish on the skin. Duo blinked for a few seconds. "Crikey," he said quietly. "Where the hell's that gone then?"
Quatre sighed and rubbed his temples. This was too much. "Look," he said quietly. "You said the last thing you remember was being flung on that metal, right?"
Duo tore his gaze away from his shoulder to nod.
"Well then," Quatre said. "If it were you, you'd have a huge scar from that too, wouldn't you?"
Duo started to protest.
"But you haven't got a scar, have you?" Quatre said. "You haven't even got so much as the pain from that injury which would have killed you."
Duo fell into quiet. He knew he didn't have a scar from the injury. He never thought to check, but he knew he would have known there was one if there was. Duo hung his head. "I don't.understand," he said. He lifted his face again. There were tears in his eyes. "It's me you guys. I swear it. I swear it on my own blood. I swear it on the blood of Father Maxwell," he looked at all of them. They were all quiet. Duo pulled his gaze to Heero. "Heero," he whispered. All his hurt and his loneliness caused his voice to shake. "Heero, it's me. You told me that you." the tears choked his voice. "Please."
Heero wanted to believe. He so wanted to believe. He wanted to fall into the trap. He hated seeing those eyes that he'd missed so sorely filled with tears. He hated to see Duo feeling so betrayed.but it wasn't Duo. Duo was lying in the earth in a graveyard in the Sanc Kingdom. Heero had seen his lifeless body, cleaned and dressed lovingly, lying on the white satin of a coffin, eyes closed as if in a peaceful sleep. He had seen the coffin lid fixed forever over Duo's body. He had seen it lowered into the ground and then seen it buried.
Though he saw a boy sitting before him, hurt and confused, he knew it wasn't Duo.
Heero closed his eyes to shut out the penetrating violet stare and once more turned his back on him. It was a cruel twist of a knife embedded in his life, heart and soul. A cruel twist brought on by OZ. People were going to die for this.
"And you genuinely have no idea why we're not falling for this?" Heero heard Wufei's voice as if it were from a great distance.
Duo blinked away the tears and looked at Wufei. His eyes were hard and merciless as ever, but Duo sensed something in all the pilots had at last been shaken. "It's not a trick you guys. I never tell a lie. Especially not to you."
Something in Trowa clicked. He abruptly left the room. There was a short interval whilst everyone else just stared at each other.
"Come here a second," Trowa's voice came from the next room.
Wufei and Quatre glanced at the boy in the chair.
"He's not going anywhere," Heero said. But for some strange reason, the cruel words were soft and had a different meaning. Heero knew somehow that the boy had no reason to want to leave.
Heero, Quatre and Wufei all proceeded into the next room.
Trowa was sitting at the small battered desk with a laptop open on the surface. The illumination from the screen danced across his stoic face as the keys clicked noisily.
"What the hell is this?" Wufei asked. "What is going on? He can't be a double, he's just too." Wufei searched for the right words, ".Duo. No one else could act like that."
"It's not Duo," Heero said firmly. "Duo is dead."
"More importantly, what's he doing here?" asked Quatre. "I mean, not even OZ is stupid enough to try and infiltrate us with a double of someone who is dead."
Heero involuntarily flinched. "You're right," he said quietly. "They're trying to break our moral."
Quatre and Wufei exchanged glances silently. Quatre took a breath. "I don't think OZ would go to all this trouble so as just to play a cruel joke on us."
"Joke!" Heero snapped. "You call this a joke!" Heero continued to shout, despite the warning glances he got from Trowa. "My best friend died seven months ago and I've continued to go through hell and back to try and deal with it, and know he's sitting in my lounge, big as life. That's your idea of a joke, is it, Quatre Raberba Winner?"
Trowa stood. "That's enough Heero," he warned. "Getting at each other's throats won't solve anything."
Heero did not fail to notice the double entendre in Trowa's words. Heero had almost unhinged in the kitchen, almost throttled the guy to death. He clutched his head and tried to regain some control. "I'm sorry," was all he said, quietly.
Quatre nodded and smiled reassuringly, even though Heero had his eyes closed. "It's ok, Heero. I know this is hard."
Heero blinked his eyes open. They were all watching him with mixtures of understanding and sympathy in their eyes. It was hard on them too, Heero belatedly realised. Duo had been their friend as well.
"What I think is so strange," said Wufei to get back to the subject. "Is that he is really convinced that he is Duo." He looked at his companions who urged him to continue. "I mean, he wouldn't point out the faults in his disguise, like the scar on his shoulder, if he were trying to infiltrate. Whoever is behind this obviously knew that Duo had had a scar on his shoulder, otherwise the double wouldn't have known. If they wanted to pass him off actually as Duo, they would have faked a scar or just have him clam up about it so no one would realise it wasn't there. But he pointed out its absence, albeit unwittingly, because he was sure that scar would be there."
Trowa nodded and clicked one final key on the laptop. "I think I've figured it out," he said as calmly as if he were announcing that it had started raining. The pilots clustered around the laptop.
Heero examined the screen. OZ research files. "Clones?" he asked Trowa. "You think that."
Trowa looked at all of them. "It's the only thing that makes sense. There have been rumors of cloning technology floating around all over the place for years. What if OZ has finally perfected it?"
Quatre shivered again, not just because of the cold. "So, you think that guy tied to the chair in there.is Duo's clone?"
Trowa slowly nodded.
Wufei shook his head. "Why in the Earth Sphere would OZ want a clone of Duo? A clone of one of us might make sense so they could use it for infiltration, but we know that this guy isn't for infiltration."
"You're right," said Trowa, shutting the laptop. "He's not. I think he was probably made as a weapon, so that they might have a fighting chance of being able to beat us in a battle. They want a pilot as good as us on their side."
Heero tried to think this through. "Then what's he doing here? Is he on OZ's side?"
Trowa shook his head. "I don't think so. As far as I can tell, I think he is the first one they've used for this. They wanted a pilot as good as Duo Maxwell. To make one, all they needed was some of Duo's DNA."
"The blood in Deathscythe's cockpit," Heero whispered.
Trowa nodded and continued. "I've heard that your memories are written into your DNA as well, that's how we keep them. OZ will have not wanted the body of Duo, because a body is just a body. It will have been strong and healthy like Duo's was, but it wouldn't be an ace pilot. So, I think they must have included in the clone all of his memories, all of his characteristics and talents that were mapped in his DNA so he would be as good a pilot as the original."
"Makes sense," Wufei said.
"But, something has gone wrong," Heero said. "They expected to have a new person wake up in the bed who they could control and recruit to their cause. They thought that by giving him all those things, all that would happen would be that he would have the talents and the resources they needed to use."
"Exactly," said Trowa. "And that did happen. But, along with it, they have just put everything where it belongs. They have given him all the same experiences, all the same drives, the same personality," Trowa looked significantly at Heero. "The same feelings. He is exactly the same person as the one who died."
Quatre nodded. "They thought he's wake up green and confused like a baby, but an incredibly useful baby that would know how to fly a Gundam terrifically. But he didn't wake up a baby. He woke up as Duo Maxwell."
"No," Heero said. "He's not Duo! You've just explained that."
"No," said Trowa. "He's not the original Duo. But he is an exact copy. That's why, when he found out he was in an OZ facility, he escaped and tracked us down."
There was a long silence. Quatre finally voiced the question that they all wanted to ask. "Do you think he knows?"
"No," said Trowa quietly. "I don't think he does. That's why he was certain of the scar. That's why he can't understand why we don't believe him."
"He doesn't know he's dead," Heero said quietly. "He thinks he is Duo."
"Well," said Quatre. "I guess, in a certain sense, he is."
"No!" said Heero quickly. "He is not Duo."
To avoid another discussion that was only going to achieve getting everyone angry, Wufei chipped in. "Listen. As far as that guy sitting tied to a chair out there is concerned, he is Duo, right? He remembers the battle, he remembers being injured badly. He thinks he's been captured by OZ for seven months but has managed to escape. And he came back to us and we've treated him like this. Now, what we really need to decide now is," Wufei took a breath and met eyes with everyone in the room one at a time, "do we tell him?"
Quatre chewed his lip and looked at Trowa. Trowa frowned slightly and looked at Heero. This was hardest on him most of all. What kind of decision was this for him to make, for any of them to make? Tell a guy who thinks he is your friend that he's not. Tell him all his memories, all his experiences, all his feelings belong to someone else? Someone else who is dead?
"This is not fair," Heero said quietly. That summed up everything Heero had ever experienced.
Quatre, always gentle and caring, spoke. "It would shatter him if we told him."
"But if he finds out by himself, it could be worse," Wufei pointed out. "Especially if he finds out we knew all along."
"We can't let him carry on thinking he's someone he's not," Heero said quietly. "He was created by OZ. We should kill him."
All the pilots knew that was what they should do. It was the most prudent course of action. It would stop OZ getting their hands on him, it would stop him living on stolen memories and it would mean that they wouldn't have to live with the pain of existing with their deceased best friend's clone.
But not one of them could bare the thought of doing it.
"We should keep him with us for a while," said Quatre. "We need to destroy that OZ facility that created him in order to make sure this does not happen again. We will need him to tell us where it is."
They all nodded at the logic of that.
They all looked at one another and an unspoken decision passed between them.
"We'll have to tell him some time though," said Wufei.
"And we will," said Trowa. "Just not yet."
"This is going to be hard," Quatre said. They all agreed. Living with someone that thought, acted and spoke exactly like someone who they knew to be dead was going to be tough.
However, all of them were shamefully wishing that it might bring back a little of what they had lost.
"We must all agree," said Heero. "Never to forget that our Duo is dead. We must not try and replace him, however much we may like to."
"We must do justice to his memory," Wufei said.
They all nodded. This was going to be very, very hard.
Author's note: more to come very soon. Should have another chapter up soon. For all the new readers, how do you like it so far?